Salut! I'm Amielle, a freelance photojournalist currently living in Madrid, Spain as an au pair. This is where I share what I see and the life that goes along with it. Where I (sometimes) struggle with the balance between 'pictures' and 'a story'. Where I never give up, even if I don't have it quite right.

Homesickness is the long version of ‘I love you’

Honesty time: I don’t get homesick. Not unless I’m actually sick and just need my mom to get me glasses of water and hot water bottles and all that other stuff that moms do when you’re sick. But other than that (and that’s happened a total of two times in the last four years so..), the last time I was actually homesick was when I was eight and spent the week at my cousin’s with her and her family.

Then yesterday happened and getting homesick sucks. I mean you’d think that would be obvious, but it really, really does. The trickiest part of it is, I think, the fact that there’s no one real cause of it. There’s no one thing that makes you go, “Yup, I miss home,” it’s an accumulation of various things that after awhile make you (me) go, “Was this really the best idea I’ve ever had?”, even though, yes, it’s up there on that ‘Best Ideas’ list.

Because I’m pretty sure every French person on the street can just tell that all the thoughts I’m thinking are not in French and no matter how many times I rehearse what I’m going to ask for in my head and finger all the euros in my pocket, I’m still going to say ‘tu’ instead of ‘vous’ and drop half my change on the floor or have issues finding my wallet. It’s trying to figure out which baguette shop is the one that the family normally buys from or trying to remember exactly which street it is that the flower stand is on. It’s not knowing what all the rules of the road are or having to learn how to drive stick (as useful as it is to know) and having to take driving lessons once more, for the first time since I was fifteen.

One of the most difficult things, however, is the fact that I’ve lost the confidence to take my camera while I’m out and take pictures of the new place that I’m living in because I want to share, yet all that confidence that I gained after two years in Belleville has somewhere flown out the window and I’m going, “But…”.

I guess it’s one of those things that, no matter how much you think about what the hard things about a good idea might be, until you’re actually there and living it and facing them, you don’t know how you’re going to react to them, or, really, how difficult they are.

Ways I battle homesickness: Skype session with my mother who just looks at me when I say I’m homesickness and then tells me to soldier on because, hello child, you are in France. Write postcards home. Rewatch the videos on Facebook that my sister has made of my baby brother saying, “Hi Amma!” and blowing kisses. Read La Roja and then spend hours learning about Franco’s Spain and the difference between Franco and Stalin and the similarities between Franco and Hitler and then get lost in Russian history. (yes, that actually helps and I don’t understand why.)

Things I’m Loving:

+ Female Football Stars Playlist – Female football players from around the globe with their favourite song. My favourite right now is Ed Sheeran’s ‘The A Team’. Really a little bit of everything kind of playlist.